Children worry about their parents getting old. My mother is now 76 and instead of getting a hip replacement she has just turned into a DJ. Should I be worried?

And she hasn't taken up residency on Friday night at a local old peoples' home to crank out a few Glenn Miller tunes, getting racy with Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker as the evening progresses towards 9pm and Ovaltine. The club she is DJ-ing is on Greek Street, in Soho, and is called The Green Carnation. Every Tuesday night between 9pm and 1am you can find her downstairs on the decks, playing everything from Motown to disco, or hauling others on to the floor to follow her in the dance like a pied piper.

My mother is an extraordinary woman, always willing to try new things. So when she was offered the job - at the funeral of the last DJ, Tallulah, her old friend - she accepted happily. “Why not, I said. I love to thrill to the rhythm, dancing is one of my favourite things. Plus, being behind the turntables is perfect when you're half deaf like me. You don't have to strain to listen to conversations.”

When she rang to tell me of her new engagement, she asked if I'd like to help. I said yes, like the good daughter. I've run a few clubs in my time so it's not too bizarre, though I admit I know nothing about decks, DJ-ing or the latest music. Luckily I have an 18-year-old daughter fully engaged in these matters, who also has 500 friends on Facebook and another 100 on her phone. Her reaction was instantaneous: “Wicked! Getting down with the gran.” And thus was born the first multigenerational disco in Soho on a Tuesday - or any other - night, nicknamed The Parkin Lot.

What's great is the mixing up of the generations. In Pontycymmer in South Wales, where my mother comes from, it's normal for everyone, of whatever age, to go out on Saturday for a night of entertainment, dancing and drinking. It's the same in Spain, France and Italy, but for some reason the English like to ghettoise age groups, so the young are gangs of pack wolves drunk and prowling the streets after dark, the middle-aged sit in restaurants widening their girths before having heart attacks, and the old we hardly acknowledge. At what age are we supposed to give up the dance of life? Any moment now, apparently, as I've just turned 47.

The opening night of The Parkin Lot had a throng of 18 to 80-year-olds strutting their stuff. It worked brilliantly, with older friends chasing younger ones, richer ones treating the poor students to bottles of champagne, distinguished dancers showing the inexperienced youths how to shake your moneymaker, do the mashed potato and move like a sex machine. The young men commented on the proliferation of MILFs (mothers I'd like to f***) to my daughter, who then laughingly relayed the information to me, while gay divorcees made themselves more than noticeable.

I had intended party games, as the date fell on my birthday, but what with one thing and another we haven't yet got around to games of musical statues - let alone loveliest legs, most eligible bachelor and bachelette, and blind dating (contestants to be sent to the loo or a handy cupboard together, then required to report back on any knee-trembling activity). We did have an award for best disco dancer, though, won by barman Dick Bradsell, 48, for a backward flip.

This week was an older crowd - but only in birth years, with the fashion icon Zandra Rhodes in a silver outfit and pink locks gyrating on the dancefloor with the artist Andrew Logan to the likes of Tammi Terrell and the Temptations. “Oh, I remember this. I went to see the Temptations in America in 1968 - marvellous, it was,” shouts Andrew, before my mother grabs the pair of them to get a dancing circle going. Who needs gym membership when you have a good disco?

Next week promises to be a bumper night, with my daughter's friends celebrating the end of their A levels. Hopefully, my friends will have recovered from their children's exam fever and from my birthday two weeks earlier. My mum's gang seem to have an endless supply of energy for partying - they might have trouble finding the place, but they don't want to go home at the end.

A friend asked if trying to attract enough people would leave me exhausted. But I don't think so, thanks to the magic of Facebook.

Hopefully this will be the first of many clubs to understand that all can be included, whatever their age, class, race or sex. We can have not only a funny time but a fun one, too. Isn't it time you slipped your disco pumps back on, and came to join in the dance?

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